Early Morning Riser

by Katherine Heiny

  Jane frowned, concentrating. “He said once he had a brother who was—who was like Jimmy. But that his brother was dead.”

  The sheriff looked at her, patient and encouraging.

  Her eyes strayed to the bookshelves, where Mr. Hawthorn kept his twenty-four volume Encyclopaedia Britannica set. He had told Jane once that they had been given to him for his high school graduation in 1967 and were his proudest possession. Dusty red hardcover books with no mention of moon landings or pocket calculators. What sort of life did you lead if this was your proudest possession? Jane’s mind felt like a box of Skittles dropped on the floor, thoughts scattering and rolling everywhere.

  She looked at the sheriff helplessly. “That’s it. That’s all I can remember. No, wait, he told Freida he played the harmonica.”

  “Think about it. Maybe more will come to you,” the sheriff said. “Little things that didn’t seem important at the time.”

  But Jane was remembering the Taco Tuesday when Willard had played his version of Star of the Week. How he’d gotten them all to talk about themselves, steering the conversation as expertly as a captain steering a riverboat. Freida, Aggie, Duncan, even Gary. But now she realized that Willard had only asked questions, not answered them. About himself, he had not said a word.

  * * *

  —

  Mr. Hawthorn offered to take Jane’s class for the rest of the day, but Jane said, “Oh, no, I’ll be fine. It’s less than an hour.”

  Why did she say that? She had no idea.

  “If you’re sure,” Mr. Hawthorn said. “And Duncan called and said he’d pick you up after school.”

  “Okay,” Jane said.

  She left the principal’s office and walked back toward her classroom, trailing one hand against the wall. It was a strange, dreamlike walk. But that made sense because surely she must be dreaming? The carpet was hilly and uneven, the walls bulged inward like warped boards, the floor threatened to rush up to meet her several times. She reached her classroom and put her hand on the doorknob. Brushed steel—cold, almost greasy. It felt real. She wasn’t dreaming.

  She opened the door and went in. She saw that the children were journaling—that fallback plan of substitute teachers everywhere—and that they had just about reached the outer limits of their compliance. Their cheeks were all chapped, as though they had been out in the wind instead of just listening to it, and the room was filled with the sound of their fingers flipping the edges of their journal notebooks. Ms. Lowry was walking up and down the aisles, her eyes scanning from side to side, as though restlessness were a spider she could track down and stamp out.

  “Thank you, Ms. Lowry,” Jane said. Her voice was calm, clear. “Children, you may put away your journals.”

  Her students looked startled; she never called them “children.”

  Ms. Lowry flashed Jane a grateful smile and slipped out the door, back to the office to fight the good fight against unanswered phone calls and excessive tardiness or whatever it was she did all day. It was beyond Jane’s comprehension, now that the world had changed. Now that she knew what people were capable of.

  Twenty-two pairs of eyes looked at her.

  “Class, it’s time for the next subject,” Jane said. She never called them “class” either. She seemed to have forgotten how to be herself. Or perhaps she had left her real self back in the principal’s office, and now she was just a shadow person, a wraith.

  “It’s time for Science,” Christopher Goodman said. “It says that on the schedule.”

  Jane swung her head, which seemed ponderously heavy, and looked at the schedule written on the whiteboard. “So it does,” she said. “But I’ve—I’ve—” What had she done? “I’ve changed my mind. We’ll have Story Time instead.”

  “On a Wednesday?” Kayla Norton asked doubtfully.

  “Yes,” Jane said. “Kayla, why don’t you pick a book, and we’ll all go to the Library Corner?”

  The Library Corner was in the back of the room, with a rocking chair for Jane and the Peter Rabbit rug for the children to sit on. Blond wood bookshelves held all the children’s books Jane had owned as a child and all she’d collected as an adult. Good books, all of them, dog-eared, oversized, begging to be read.

  Jane sat in the rocking chair, and Kayla handed her The Spider and the Fly. Jane opened it and began to read. Her voice was so clear and steady, so startlingly calm. Strengthened by years of careful, measured classroom speaking, it did not fail her. She read aloud, rocking slowly. She turned a page.

  Said the cunning spider to the fly, “Dear friend, what shall I do,

  To prove the warm affection I’ve always felt for you?

  I have within my pantry good store of all that’s nice;

  I’m sure you’re very welcome; will you please to take a slice?”

  Jane paused. She couldn’t see the words on the page anymore. They had pixelated and begun to shimmer. She waited for her vision to clear but it didn’t.

  She closed the book. “I know what,” she said. “Let’s do mindful breathing. Remember when Miss Heather from the yoga studio came and taught us that?”

  “I don’t like this day,” Olivia Ness said fretfully. “Everything’s changing. We’re not following the schedule.”

  “This is the last change, I promise,” Jane said. “Now, everyone, spread out a little bit and lie down. I’ll lie down, too, right here next to the chair.”

  She didn’t feel able to stand up, so she leaned forward and climbed out of the chair instead, like a dog climbing down from a hatchback. She lay down carefully and stared up at the ceiling. She listened to the rustling sounds of the children getting into position, and when they grew quiet, she knew everyone had found a place.

  “All right,” she said, and then fell silent. For a moment, she thought no words would come, that she would not be able to approximate what Miss Heather had said. They would all have to get up and do Independent Reading, and Olivia would probably cry, and Jane would, too. But suddenly Miss Heather’s words came to her, swiftly and completely, like a flower blooming in time-lapse photography. “Find a relaxed, comfortable position.” Jane spaced her words evenly. “Rest your hands at your sides. Close your eyes. Put your tongue on the roof of your mouth.”

  Brandon Hicks began making a confused choking sound, so Jane said quickly, “Never mind about your tongue—just relax your body.” She slowed her voice again. “Imagine yourself sinking into the floor. Breathe. Breathe. Focus on the natural rhythm of your breath.” The spaces between her words grew longer. “In. Out. In. Out. Feel your chest rise and then fall. Enjoy the flow of your breathing. Quiet the buzzing of your mind. Think only of your breathing. Quiet the buzzing of your mind.”

  “You already said that,” Kyle Bradshaw whispered loudly.

  “What happens to Science?” Christopher asked, turning his head. “Are we going to do it tomorrow?”

  “Breathe, Christopher.” Jane stared at the ceiling. “Breathe. Do not let earthly problems interfere. Let go of cares about material things. Let go of cares about material things. Let them go.” She sighed. “Let them go.”

  * * *

  —

  Jane had driven her car to school, so there was no real reason for Duncan to pick her up, but she felt a surge of relief when she saw his white van in the parking lot, glowing in the late-afternoon shadows like a rusty rectangular ghost.

  She opened the passenger door, and the map light shone on Duncan for a moment. Jane had never seen him so serious. It changed his looks somehow, made them artificial. He looked like a poorly lit actor in a soap opera, handsome but fading. She climbed in and shut the door. The light went out. Duncan turned the key in the ignition but didn’t put the van in gear.

  “Where’s Jimmy?” Jane asked.

  “He’s at Aggie’s,” he said, his voice slower and deeper than normal. �
�I told her we’d pick him up later. I want him to stay with us tonight. I don’t imagine Willard will ever come back here, but he does have keys to the house, and I don’t want Jim there.” He cleared his throat. “I know his name’s not Willard, but we’ve got to call him something.”

  “Of course Jimmy should stay with us.” Jane touched his shoulder gently. “How’s he holding up?”

  “Jim—Jim’s—” Duncan face contorted slightly. “Ah, you know, I don’t believe I can talk about that right now,” he said in a strangely conversational tone. “Not unless I want to lose my mind. Jim thought Willard was his friend.”

  Jane’s vision was blurring again. “I know.”

  “I never wanted to kill someone until today,” Duncan said. “Not even Tony Nowicki that time in high school.”

  Jane didn’t ask who Tony Nowicki was. “How long?” she asked instead. “How long until the first payment is due?”

  “Five days,” Duncan said. He peered out the windshield, but Jane knew he wasn’t looking at the dead leaves and candy wrappers that the wind blew through the parking lot. “Aggie’s going to list the house immediately. Maybe we can sell it before he’s more than thirty days in default.”

  Aggie, always Aggie. Even in crisis, Jane could not have Duncan to herself.

  “Maybe the sheriff will find Willard before then,” she said. “And we can get the money back.”

  “No,” Duncan said. “I don’t believe so.”

  Jane didn’t believe so either.

  “Maybe—maybe we don’t have to sell the house,” she said. “Maybe there’s another way.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it all day.” Duncan’s voice was slow, morose. “There isn’t another way.”

  “Surely we can make the bank understand.” Jane could hear the desperation in her own voice. “We can explain that it was fraud, and renegotiate the loan, and get smaller payments. I could pay a hundred a month, and—”

  “No.” Duncan shook his head. “You don’t make enough money, and you have a mortgage on your own house. I don’t make enough either. Eighty thousand dollars? The house is gone, or will be shortly.”

  “But what will happen to Jimmy?” Jane asked despairingly. “Where will he live? Can he—do you think he could get some sort of state assistance? Maybe a rent-subsidized apartment?”

  Duncan let out his breath, a long sigh like the wind outside. “Jim can’t live by himself,” he said. “I think we’ve known that all along.”

  “Well, then what’s left?” Jane said. “A halfway house? A group home? We could never do that to Jimmy.”

  “Never.” Duncan turned to look at her. His eyes blazed oddly. Then he looked back out at the parking lot. “That’s why I wanted to pick you up.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “I’ve looked at this from every angle today, and all I can think of is that you and I get married. We get married, and we buy a bigger house, and we make a stable home for Jim.”

  Jane’s voice failed her, finally. They sat in silence except for the rumble of the engine and clicking of Duncan’s keyring as it swung in the ignition switch. Jane had the queer experience of a memory forming even as it happened: she knew she would always remember this moment. The cold air seeping in around the doorframe. The smell of varnish and stale coffee. The hollowness of Duncan’s voice. But mostly the feeling of her heart turning over sullenly in her chest. This was her proposal, and now it could never be anything else.

  The wind slapped a pink plastic plate against the windshield—a plate decorated with glitter and pompons and trailing strings of craft feathers. Jane recognized it as a dreamcatcher made by one of the kindergartners. It stayed on the windshield for a moment while the wind caught its breath, and then it blew away, twirling cheerfully, into the gloom.

  2011

  It seemed to Jane that marriages were spreading across the whole land, just like the yawns in that Dr. Seuss book. First Jane and Duncan, then Marla Copeland and Bryant Campbell, Jody Walsh and Willie Roberts, Banjo and his longtime girlfriend, Kelvin Dunn and his short-time girlfriend, Grandpa Pendergrass and his home healthcare worker, and now Freida and Mr. Hutchinson.

  Mr. Hutchinson taught biology at the high school. He was a tall, thin man with a blond moustache and a florid complexion. Jane thought he looked like an extra in a Western, or maybe a cardboard cutout of an extra in a Western, because he so seldom spoke. But Freida had fallen in love with him, or rather, they’d fallen in love with each other, and now they were going to get married just as soon as Mr. Hutchinson learned to play the recorder. (Freida told Jane that she wanted to marry a musician, and the recorder was the quickest, easiest instrument to learn.) Actually, they’d already set a wedding date for November, and Mr. Hutchinson had doubled down on his recorder lessons in order to be ready. Mr. Hutchinson had a first name—John—but everyone in town simply referred to them as Mr. Hutchinson and Freida, like a lesser-known Captain and Tennille.

  All this marrying was like some sort of fever that had swept over Boyne City, and it made Jane feel like her own marriage was less meaningful, just another flu symptom. A persistent cough. A mild delirium. Everyone had it.

  “Aggie and Gary could renew their vows,” Duncan said to Jane over dinner as they discussed this. “I doubt Gary remembers the first time.”

  “What do you mean?” Jimmy asked, because of course Jimmy was there. Jimmy was always there. He lived with them, and sometimes Jane thought that spontaneous adult conversation had fled her life forever.

  * * *

  —

  Dinner was early because they were going to the evening concert at the gazebo in Old City Park afterward. As soon as Jimmy had helped Jane clear the table, all three of them climbed into Jane’s station wagon. She had traded in her Honda—a family of three adults needed a bigger car.

  Their house was bigger, too. They lived on the outskirts of town now, in a brown shingle-sided house with oddly shaped rooms and so much pine paneling in the kitchen that it felt like an Ikea showplace. Aggie had found it for them, of course. She had been like an avenging angel of real estate in the weeks following the loss of Jimmy’s house. She’d sold Jimmy’s house to a couple from downstate in only ten days—Jane suspected Aggie had shown the couple only inferior and unsuitable properties and then rushed them through the sale before they had a chance to look further—and she had been tireless in her search for a new house for Jane and Duncan and Jimmy. She’d taken them to see at least two dozen houses, and God knew how many more she’d looked at on her own. They’d chosen this house, and Aggie had lowered her angel sword and forced the owners to agree to an immediate move and the shortest possible escrow. Then she sold Jane’s house to a man from Kalkaska who had been driving through Boyne City—Jane had never found out how this was accomplished; perhaps Aggie was flagging people down on the highway—and waived her commission on all three sales. All that had been wonderful, lifesaving, heroic, but dear God, it had involved a lot of Aggie.

  Their new house was not perfect, but Duncan had liked the back deck, and Jane had liked the “bonus room” with the attached bathroom on the first floor. Aggie had said it would make a beautiful second family room, but Jane had decided instantly that it would be Jimmy’s bedroom. Jane could withstand an awful lot of life’s slings and arrows, but climbing the stairs to bed with Jimmy every night was not one of them. Jimmy would sleep down here. She had painted the room a rich cream color and furnished it with a sturdy varnished wood dresser and nightstand from the thrift store and the single bed from Duncan’s workshop apartment. Jane had bought a new mattress for the bed and made it up with soft flannel sheets and a dove-in-the-window quilt she’d found in a trunk in Mrs. Jellico’s attic. Ironic that a bed that had launched a thousand women’s orgasms—possibly tens of thousands—had come to rest in the room of a man who’d never had a girlfriend, but Jimmy seemed unaware of that. He said he’d
never slept better. Jane suspected it was less the bed than the knowledge that he was not alone in the house that made Jimmy sleep so well. How scared he must have been alone in his mother’s house, scared for years. It made Jane clench her jaw in shame just to think about it. But Jimmy had caught up on that missing sleep, and his color had improved, and he’d lost weight now that he no longer ate pizza all the time. He looked better, healthier, but lines had etched themselves on his face—the skin between his eyebrows looked like invisible fingers were pinching it—and he’d lost that sweet, glad expression that used to make him seem so young.

  On the way to the concert, they drove past the turnoff to Jimmy’s old house. Every time they drove by this turnoff, Jane promised herself that they would act as though nothing had happened, and every time, conversation faltered and they fell silent. The couple who bought Jimmy’s house had said that Jimmy could visit anytime, that they wanted to know him and the house’s history, and he would be welcome, but Jimmy had never gone.

  A block later, conversation picked back up, as it always did, with Duncan saying that he hoped Mona Wilbank wouldn’t be at the concert because she might ask when her grandma’s drop leaf table would be ready, and Jimmy asking if they had time to stop at Kilwins.

  They found a parking space and walked to the park. It was late May and the evening held on to a chill stubbornly, the way a dog holds on to a bone. Yet the people sitting on the benches and on blankets around the gazebo wore summer clothing—shorts and T-shirts, sundresses and the thinnest of cardigans—in pastel colors. If Jane squinted, they looked like scoops of every possible ice cream flavor. It seemed as though people thought they could force warmer weather by dressing for it.